


Frost on Stone

by LectorEl



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Bunny did not sign up for this shit, Depression, Gen, Jack as an old-school fairy tale spirit, Suicide, fic of other fic, imagery of children's deaths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LectorEl/pseuds/LectorEl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various drabbles and mini-fills for the rotg_kink meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Name is Thanos

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on rotg_kink:  
> Okay, does anyone remember the Toonami block on Cartoon Network, what, ten years ago? (i feel old) One of the shows on it was Gundam Wing. The storyline is a little complicated to get into here, but one of the main characters refers to himself as Shinigami, the God of Death, and death is the only higher power that he believes in. He also never lies.
> 
> I sort of want to see a story with Duo as a death spirit, he and Jack would get along like a house on fire, and it would be hilarious.

“Hey, Jackie,” Duo greets cheerfully, leaning on his scythe. The younger boy is the same as ever, though Jack has new context for the darkly glittering sand that dusts his eyelashes and fingernails. Duo’s eyes shine brightly red under the moonlight, but Jack finds him more sad than frightening. Duo was, after all, the first person to see him, back during the civil war.  
  
 _‘My names is Thanos. Everyone who sees me dies,’_ Duo had told him, and for as long as Jack has known him, that’s been true. They don’t see each other often- Duo’s duties take him places Jack can’t follow, blood soaked fields, inner cities in the height of summer, hidden back rooms where atrocities happen. Jack does not _want_ to follow Duo, for all he loves his friend with the desperate fervor a lonely child.  
  
Duo is death, and not just death, but a very specific sort. He’s the last rattling breath of a child soldier dying from a bullet to the gut, the miserable whimper of a starving baby, the muffled sobs of an abused toddler. He’s the death of children abused, abandoned, neglected, used.  
  
Duo, Jack thinks, is the guardian of children the Guardians can’t help. The children who have no use for wonder or hope, who have nothing good to remember or dream about.  
  
“Duo!” Jack grins, hooking an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “It’s been _ages_. How are you?”  
  
Duo shrugs. “Been better, been worse. Things in Chicago are finally starting to get quiet now that winter’s here.” He smiles gratefully at Jack for that. Duo’s not Pitch, he takes no pleasure in the thought of death.  
  
 _‘They’ll die either way, that’s not what I control,’_ Duo had explained once, stroking the hair of a little girl who had frozen to death in the snow. _‘I just make it easier for them, in their last moments.’_  
  
“Enough about me, what about you? Heard some interesting rumors from the east wind.” Duo smirks, bouncing on one heel. “You’ve gone and joined up with a bunch of fairy tales? How’s that work, Jackie?”  
  
Jack shoves him into a snow bank. “The guardians aren’t fairy tales!” he protests, laughing.  
  
“I’ll believe it when I see them with my own eyes.” Duo attempts to pull himself out of the snow, and when that fails, lunges for Jack’s arm, pulling him down instead.


	2. The List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for this prompt:  
> Jack knows he is forever falling in and out of love. His heart just randomly decides sometimes that 'Wow! I'm in love.' He's totally ok with it. Being in love makes him happy, and since most of the time the target of his affections couldn't see him, he doesn't bother with normal courtship behaviour, he admires from afar. After a season or two he usually falls out of love, but its not hurting anyone so he's fine with it.
> 
> Cue Jack becoming a Guardian and suddenly he has all these people seeing him, talking to him, being nice to him. And Jack's heart decides 'I love you, and you, and you...'
> 
> Jack thinks being in love is great, it makes him happy, but he knows it's 'just a crush' so has no intention of making his feelings known, and certainly not while he's crushing on multiple people.
> 
> Bonus:  
> +Mention of strange previous crushes. (i.e. Jack once fell in love with a tree, or the moon, or the colour turquoise)

Jack has a list, hidden away. No one could ever read it but him, written as it is, in shapes and symbols that only make sense to him. If they could even find it in the first place. He keeps it on the crags of a mountain peak that no living person has ever scaled, so high up in the atmosphere even the wind can’t carry him.

It’s only proper, after all. Jack is human, and his memory fallible. The only reminders he has are the ones he makes, and Jack does not want to forget. He keeps their memory up here, marked out in frost on stone.

_(If you looked, and could understand, here is some of what you’d see: Maria; Andromeda and Polaris; Miguel; Lifen and her half-sister Therese; the Jagannath Temple in Orissa; Daniel; Erik; Leilani; the north wind, and the west; Anfesia; Sarai called Sarah; James; moonlight shining on the north Atlantic; Alexander who was sometimes Alexandra; a storm-scarred willow tree)_

Today is a good day. Today he has new names to add to the list, names he’d long forgotten. Mother and Father, Little Sister and Baby Brother. Their names have the tang of bitter-sweet things, but Jack does not regret the memories. Jack takes his time, layering frost as thin and delicate as gold leaf, marking them into his history. He uses an entire cliff-face to capture who they were, Mother’s wry smile, Father’s calloused hands, Little Sister’s long hair, Baby Brother’s startled wail. They deserve no less.

Someday, he’s going to add the Guardians to his list. He is not ready to add them today. But he will. One day, he’s going to look at them, and fall. Maybe tomorrow, maybe a hundred years from now. He wonders what it will be like, with people who can see him. It’s been three hundred years since the last time, and he is out of practice with the art.

But that is tomorrow, or a hundred years from now. Today, he remembers.

Jack has a list, of all the ways he's been in love.


	3. Little Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written as a continuation of another author's [fill](http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/2200.html?thread=2188440#cmt2188440) of this prompt:  
> Inspired by this: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-06-05/news/myths-over-miami  
> A folk religion was invented by the homeless and housing-insecure children of Miami, for those that skipped the article. And the interesting thing is that in this religion, evil is winning. The world is dark and dangerous, filled with monsters barely held back by the good guys.
> 
> The story idea: Pre-movie Jack actually does have believers. It's just that they don't believe in Jack Frost.
> 
> A children's folk religion somehow ended up incorporating Jack Frost into their mythology. Only, being a religion of unsafe and frightened children, it's not really his 'fun' side they were interested in.
> 
> Jack Frost becomes Jack, saint of suicides, the guardian of those that kill themselves, the promise of a painless end if it gets to be too much. And gradually, due to the nature of religion and legends, he's attributed with other aspects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the original fill first, otherwise this will make less sense.

They do not often meet. Lady Luck is not one of them, not truly. She has no sense of duty, and cannot be relied upon. It is just the three of them to turn back the great bird’s horrors: the White Lady, and the Red Man, and Brother Frost.   
  
Brother Frost has another name, and another life. Red is grateful for it. His brother’s duties wear on his soul, and the horrors they protect against have no mercy for his age. Quite the contrary, his perpetual youth making him a favored target.   
  
It is good that he has an escape, a life he can slide sideways into to escape the creeping black. Red and White have both left their brother's other identity to him. He is safe in it, and their duties rarely allow them time to do more than rest.  
  
But the horrors are growing, in number and in cunning. Red has seen his brother more times in the past decade than in the century preceding it. They are no longer enough to turn back the flood. Before this time, they three had decided to leave the moon’s folk to their duties.   
  
The guardians did their part to fight the black, however unknowing, and the horrors crept around their territories, not daring to make themselves known. Now though, now the horrors grow bold, and ignorance could be no protection. The moon’s folk must be warned.  
  
So with heavy heart and weary soul, Red turns his gaze to the north pole. The White Lady stays behind, to guard the world as best she can while Red was away, and their brother, Red hopes, can be spared the knowledge of what’s to come just a little longer. But when he arrives, Red realizes it is for naught. Brother Frost sits on the building’s roof, waiting.  
  
“Hello, Red,” Brother Frost says, voice sad. “You’re going to ask them to fight, aren’t you?”  
  
“I am. I’m sorry, brother.” Red opens his arms, and lets his brother cling and bury his face in Red’s thick mane. His brother is so young. Will always be so young, a child stuck serving in this ancient war.  
  
“I hate this,” his brother says. Red hates it too. Children’s beliefs are often cruel, though they do not mean them to be. Red cannot relieve their brother of his duties.  
  
Red cups the back of Brother Frost’s neck, kissing the crown of his head, and makes the only promise he can. “Everything that has a beginning will have an ending. Some day, this will be over.”  
  
“Let’s begin this then, so it will end.” His brother smiles, childish and ancient and terribly sad, and speaks as though he believes it.


	4. A Lack of Interest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for this prompt:  
> i love all the stuff emphasizing that Jack has been alone and ignored for 300 years, but irl when people don't look at or speak to me, i just don't talk. After so many years, i could see the ability to talk just wasting away (especially if it was for 300 years...).
> 
> What I'd like is like an AU where the guardians go to look for the mischief making spirit. They think he's going to be that fun kid (my head-canon is that he's like 13-14 but whatever filler wants) but he's really just a really depressed, thin as rail, mute kid. This could make their job harder or easier depending on filler.
> 
> If its easier, maybe because since he can't talk he's always listening.
> 
> If harder, with nobody to talk to, he doesn't have any kind of sign language thing like sandy does. Or maybe he doesn't have the patience to listen to their loud voices speaking directly at him, something he hasn't ever heard since the moon spoke to him.

Jack rolled his eyes fondly at Jamie Bennet’s defensive insistence that big foot ‘was _too_ real.’ Someday soon, he had to get back up to the north pole, see about snatching some yeti fur. That’d make Jamie’s day.  
  
It’d been decades since Jack had really felt the inclination, or had the energy, to stir up anything big. But he still likes it if he can make a kid smile. Nobody is ever going to see Jack. He’s resigned to that fact. But he can still affect the world in little ways, and sometimes, that’s enough. Not always. Not often, really. But sometimes.  
  
Jack lept to the top of the fence, keeping pace with Jamie all the way to his school. Jamie parted ways with his friends, and Jack curled up in the shelter of the school’s roof to sleep. Jack was tired all the time, and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.  
  
Jack woke to the bell a few times, always rolling over to return to sleep. It wasn’t until the night fell, and the north wind came nudging around, insisting Jack move, that Jack let himself be roused.  
  
It was a full moon tonight. Bright and high, shining. Jack tilted his head back to watch it. How long had it been since he’d walked under the moonlight? Years, at least. The only thing that could stir Jack to action was the wind or occasionally one of his favorite children. Nights Jack spent asleep, like most of the world.   
  
Jack raised a hand in greeting. The man in the moon could see him at least, even if he never said much. That was another one of Jack’s small things that he tried to be content with.   
  
The first wave of dreamsand made Jack twitch, and he ducked into the shadows. The Guardians can see him- or at least, the yetis who work for Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny could see him, around the turn of the last century, and Jack can’t see a reason why that would change, unless he’s getting more invisible with time. (And if he is, he doesn’t want to know.) It hurt more to be seen and not acknowledged than it did not to be seen. So Jack hid.  
  
“Jack Frost.” The Easter Bunny was looking at Jack. He looked- surprised, almost, Jack thought. Jack stiffened, shoulders going tight. It was bad enough knowing they could see him and ignored him, did they have to rub it in?   
  
They stared at one another for a few moments before Jack shrugged and turned away. Whatever the rabbit was doing out this close to Easter, it wasn’t Jack’s business. Nothing was Jack’s business, so he was very confident about that judgment.  
  
“Oy! I’m talking to you!”  
  
Jack looked over his shoulder. This was new. He raised his eyebrows.  
  
“You need to come with me,” The rabbit ordered, looking like someone had hit him between the eyes with a wet fish. The mental image made Jack’s lips twitch. He shrugged again. This entire situation was new, and it wasn’t like the guardians could do much to harm him. No harm in indulging the rabbit.   
  
Jack stepped back towards the rabbit, and cocked his head expectantly. The rabbit seemed to flush, before hitting the ground twice with his hind leg. And then they were gone.


	5. A Lack of Interest, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As before, minifills should be considered complete in themselves. I may decide to continue one, as I did here, but I'm not committed to finishing like I am with 'Born in a Storm', or my other full fledged fics.

_It’s loud_ , is Jack’s first thought. Too loud, too bright. He stepped back, placing the Easter Bunny between him and the rest of the building. He didn’t recognize this place, and the sounds of people moving below made his stomach clench. He didn’t like being around people.

“North, I don’t know what the man in the moon was thinking, but this is a bad idea,” the Easter Bunny said, shifting discreetly so Jack could slide further behind him.  “The tyke is about two good meals away from collapse. He couldn’t defend a _flea_ in this state.”

Jack scowled, and thought about jabbing the rabbit someplace tender.

“Bunny, we have not even seen boy!” boomed…whoever the Easter Bunny was talking to. “Let us make own judgments.”

The Easter Bunny turned halfway around to look at Jack. “Do you want to meet them?” he asked, looking Jack in the eye. His gaze made Jack want to duck away. It was too full of things.  “If you want to leave-“

Jack cocked his head up, offering the rabbit a brief quirk of his mouth which might be described as a smile by the overly optimistic. He’s not sure how he and the Easter Bunny suddenly became allies, but he’ll take it.

The rabbit muttered something under his breath, and stepped aside. “Jack, this is North, Sandy, and- where’s Tooth?” he asked, breaking off. Neither of the two answered him. They were both too busy staring at Jack. Jack shoved his hands into the pocket of the oversized hoodie he wore, and tried not to look intimidated.

He knows he doesn’t look like much. It’s been a decade or two since he bothered to cut or comb his hair, and it hits at his shoulders, messy, tangled, and streaked with ice. Jack usually has it tied back, but his hairband broke a few weeks ago, the elastic giving out from the constant chill, and he hadn’t bothered to acquire a new one yet. Add to that the hoodie he wears-grey, and twelve sizes larger than he is-and he knew he looked like a homeless vagrant.

He _was_ a homeless vagrant. That wasn’t any reason to stare. Jack scowled as they kept watching him. They wanted to stare? Fine. Jack would do it right back.

“Are you sure this is Jack Frost?” North asked, looking right over Jack’s head at Bunny. “Man in moon said-“

“I know what he said, North,” Bunny snapped. “I met the tyke back two hundred years ago, and he looked like that. If Manny wanted _that_ Jack, he should’ve sent us earlier.”

Jack was tugged backwards, against Bunny’s chest, as he continued to rant. “What the hell was Manny thinking? This entire setup is-”

North and Sandy were still staring, but at least it was at Bunny. Jack yanked at the arm holding him pointedly, raising his eyebrows in exaggerated question when Bunny looked down.

It was a mistake to come. It’s only been a few minutes, and already the chaos of this place made him want to curl up in a ball and hide away someplace where it was dark and still. He wanted to get whatever-the-hell it was that the guardians wanted with him done as quickly as possible, and then he was going to find a glacier to crawl into and sleep for a few months.


	6. Step-Sister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this](http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/1511.html?thread=6162663#cmt6162663) fill over on the meme. Read it first, or you'll get confused.

_**“Why, you are not like me,” he said. “What are you doing out in the cold?”** _

\- and she does something she hasn't since papa died. She tells the truth.

“Mama sent me,” she says, softly, softly, not looking the pale spirit in the eye. “She wants more of what you gave step-sister.”

Cold fingers curl in her hair. “Poor little thing,” the spirit croons, almost but not quite mocking. “Your mama doesn't love you at all.” The words bite like the night air, worse for their ring of truth.

“Mama married papa for his money, and when it ran out -” she cuts herself off, sniffling. “Mama likes me, though. I didn't die. Not like papa.”

“Poor little thing,” he repeats, and icy arms wrap over her shoulders. “Your step-sister has her sharp edges, but you don't have any at all.”

“Edges are dangerous, with mama.” The words slip out, truths she's never spoken before. Lots of things are dangerous, with mama, but she's learned to stay safe.

“Safe and sound, and oh so very still.” He hooks his chin atop her head. “That's death, not life.”

“Better death than dying,” she says, and claps numb hands over her mouth, horrified. She shouldn't have said that.

The spirit laughs. “So old for your eyes, to say such things. I think I'll keep you, instead. Won't that be a fun trick?”

And nothing she says with her clumsy tongue can sway him, after that. He ignores her tears, and her poor attempts at bargaining, laughs at her weak struggles against his hold. His hands hold her back when step-father finds them, finds her, the snow-wrapped shell she'd slipped free of some time in the night. 

They stay to watch her mama's _nothing_ when step-father returns with her body, and step-sister's distant pity, and when she's returned to the ground, he pulls her away, laughing. “Come away with me, little thing, for the world's wild and full of wonder!”

She follows, though he doesn't hold her any longer. Where else is she to go? He's the only one to see her, him and the things that flicker about the edges of his power. She doesn't flicker. She whispers, sometimes, and sometimes roars, but never flickers.

His name is Jokul Frosti, Father Frost. Jack. He calls her 'little thing,' as if she is no more than that, and she - 

“Don't,” she says one day long after, flicking her insubstantial fingertips at his cheek. “I don't like it when you call me that.”

Jack smiles at her, thin and sharp as an icicle on a cave roof. “Of course, Wind. You only had to say.”

“You always play tricks,” she huffs, and flicks his cheek again, just for spite.


	7. The definition of insanity, etc. (Jack will never be a fearling)

Sometimes, Jack goes along with it. When he’s lonely. When he’s injured. When Pitch gets that fractured, wounded look.

When they’re both too crazy to know better.

So yes, Jack knows Pitch. As well as anyone does, he’d bet. He feels qualified to say Pitch is really, really not right in the head.

_(Takes one to know one, the fearling prince hisses in the back of his mind.)_

“That was my idea,” Santa booms, but Jack is not listening. There’s black, gleaming sand clinging to corners of the room, and oh, _hell no_. It’s been the better part of a decade since the last time Pitch tried to turn him, and the remnants have nearly faded. He’d like to keep his record going, thank you very much.

“What do you want, and how is Pitch involved in it?” Jack asks, cutting the man off. Shadows spark in the corners of his eyes. “His sand is still here, if you hadn’t noticed.”

_(He could fix that.)_

“You know Pitch?” the toothfairy asks, hands flying up to cover her mouth in shock.

“Knew him, hated him, got the tee-shirt,” Jack quips, grinning easily. “He’s kind of a _dick_ , if you haven’t noticed.”

Bunny snorts.


	8. Jokul fic prototype, written Feb. 19th, 2013

Jokul’s stomach twists unpleasantly at the reminder of how many of Baby Tooth’s sisters are injured. He dislikes pain, both his own and the pain of others.

“You are assigned a specific territory, correct?” Jokul asks, stroking Baby Tooth’s downy feathers. “If I retrieved an atlas, could you show me it?”

Baby Tooth chirps her agreement, nuzzling against his cheek. There’s little time to converse any further, as the sound of his master’s feet against the slate announce his return. Jokul places Baby Tooth back in her hidden nest in the craggy stone wall, and stands.

“Welcome back, master,” Jokul says, bowing his head. Pitch says nothing, merely gesturing impatiently for Jokul to follow him, and he obediently falls in step. There is work to do, doubtlessly.

There always is.

~*~

He lays the atlas open against the rotting remains of a fallen log, sitting across from it with Baby Tooth resting on his shoulder.

“You were in Europe when I injured you. Is that where your territory is?” Jokul asked. Baby Tooth shook her head, point and squeaking at the picture of the North American continent.

“Mexico? Canada? The United States?”

Baby Tooth chirped at the last, the sound sweet and even bell-like in the gloom of the forest. Jokul reached up and stroked the back of her head, feeding a little more of his power into her.

“Your territory is in America.” Jokul turned the pages of the atlas until he came across a map of the middle country of the continent. He lifted Baby Tooth from his shoulder carefully, and set her down on the open map. “Tell me where, please.”

Baby Tooth gestured expansively, circling a long patch of coastline in the north east, covering New Jersey and the tip of Pennsylvania. Jokul nodded, lifting Baby Tooth back to his shoulder.

“Shall we?” Jokul asks, and is rewarded with a happy shriek as he launches himself into the air. The wind embraces him, howling its joy at having its frost-child back, its frost-child has a found a friend, how delightful! Jokul almost wants to howl along, raising his voice with the wind. Flying fills the hollow cavity of his chest with a euphoria almost like emotion.


End file.
